Before you read this, I think it's important for me to add a quick disclaimer. I have stated in this article that the opinions I had on salvation before I began my research were shaped by conversations and sermons I have heard over the years. I think it's important for you to know that because I am not claiming to be an expert here. The conclusion I came to for myself after all of this is based on scripture, but I don't really get into my final opinion, so I don't include the scriptural evidence I used to come to reach that conclusion. This article would have turned into a book if I had dissected each of the passages I pored over in my research. I think it's important for you to do your own research before you come to adopt either Calvinism or Arminianism (or neither); I do not have the audacity to think that anyone else should adopt my philosophy on this matter simply by reading a blog entry. So I have included a couple of relevant pieces of scripture here, but because in the end I have not argued a new theology or really taken a side between Calvinism or Arminianism I didn't see it as relevant to include them all.
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A few weeks ago I sat down with my pastor/friend/thinker extraordinaire AJ and he suggested that I do some research on the age-old conversation taking place between Calvinists and Arminians. You should know that I'd only briefly heard of Calvinism and never heard of Arminianism at the time, so I was truly starting from scratch.
So for those of you who are starting out where I did, here's a brief run-down of what these two groups believe:
Arminians believe that salvation is possible by grace alone. In other words, our works and our efforts do not cause nor contribute to our salvation. They also believe that salvation is conditional on faith in Jesus and that God allows His grace to be resisted by those who are unwilling to believe. Man has the free will to either receive or resist God's grace. Many Arminians also believe that salvation can be lost; you will only receive grace as long as you continue to believe in Jesus Christ (conditional election). Predestination, to Arminians, is the idea that God does not predetermine who will believe, but rather what those who decide to believe will receive — our future inheritance, if you will. Arminianism is a belief strongly upheld by the Methodist church.
Calvinists subscribe to the theology originally put forth by John Calvin, a protestant living in the 16th century. This theology was amended and influenced over the generations that followed by many different scholars and theologians. The core beliefs in Calvinism center around the complete ruin of our ethical nature repaired only by the sovereign grace of God. They believe that in the Garden man had absolute free will, but that it was lost in the fall. Now it is up to God — and God alone — to choose the elect people who will join Him in heaven. This idea is key: It is not we who choose God, but God who chooses us (unconditional election). "One person is saved while another is condemned, not because of a willingness, a faith, or any other virtue in the first person, but because God sovereignly chose to have mercy on him" (Wikipedia).
I grew up in a small denomination — The Christian Church, Disciples of Christ — which does not endorse either Calvinism or Arminianism but rather regards the two as extremes, which should be cautiously avoided. Granted, I didn't even know my denomination had this stance until I did some research on the subject. All I knew was that it wasn't something that was often, if ever, preached at the church I grew up in.
Just to give you some background, I had these core beliefs about salvation going into my research…
- Salvation is earned only by belief in Jesus Christ (John 14:6). There is no other requirement. We choose whether or not to believe, and it is both by God's loving grace and our choice to believe in Jesus that we are saved.
- Once you receive salvation you cannot lose it.
- Our salvation is not contingent upon our works, yet it is hard for me to imagine that one can have true belief in Jesus Christ (who He is and who He calls us to be) without ever acting on that belief.
- We have some degree of responsibility and ownership in our successes and our failures.
- God exists outside of space and time — He knows who will believe in Him, but he didn't necessarily put that belief in our hearts.
- God has a deep, deep desire for us to love him, but he doesn't force it upon us. He offers His grace to those of us who choose to love Him as much as He loves us.
Remember those are/were my beliefs, not necessarily representative of the beliefs of my church or any one theology.
I'm going to be honest; I didn't get my beliefs on this matter, necessarily, from the Bible. They were based solely on conversation with other Christians and the sermons I've heard throughout the years. To be honest I never really thought much about the elect and whether those who are saved volunteer themselves by their free will or are chosen by God.
If the Calvinists are right — if God truly has written in stone who will receive His grace (and by consequence who will not) — then there are serious ramifications. I had so many questions when I considered the validity of this theology. Some of these were answered in my research, and I've only included two of these below because where I wound up after all of my head-scratching was a place in which none of my questions about these two theologies mattered…
What is the point of mission work if God has already decided who is welcome in His kingdom? » Another friend of mine from STATUS told me that it is true that Calvinists don't seem to value mission work as much as Arminians do. I believe this question is central to that reality. To Calvinists, it is true that salvation isn't a choice we make for ourselves, but that doesn't discount the importance of mission work altogether. God will use us to reach the rest of humanity whom He has chosen to be members of the elect. So missionaries aren't adding new members to the elect by sharing the Good News; instead, they are being used by God to reach every member of His elect, whether they are in Africa or Asia or South America or wherever. Perhaps they don't approach mission work with the same fervor as Arminians because Arminians always have the hope for bringing more people to Christ, while Calvinists take some comfort knowing that the elect are going to be saved somehow either way.
How can we be held responsible for our sins or our belief if it was God who authored all of existence? Is God the author of sin? Why doesn't He stand in the way of tragedy if He has the power to do so? » I've grouped these questions together because from what I have seen, Calvinists respond to all of them with a similar answer. Dave Hunt, in Debating Calvinism, equates humans (after the fall) to slaves. At the fall, we sold ourselves into slavery and have been unable to escape the realities of our condition ever since. Slaves do not choose to be freed, but rather are chosen to be free. In the same way, God chooses who He will extend His grace to, grace that none of us have earned or can earn (say the Calvinists).
Finally, I wonder why God would send his son to die for only a select group of people instead of everyone. Why wouldn't he choose everyone for His glory? If God is love, how can he leave some of His children out in the cold? I also wonder what verse of the Bible attests to the fact that we lost our free will. I don't think there's much disagreement that we had it in the Garden, but it's not clear when we lost it if we did. These are questions that need more exploration than what I can offer here. They are thoroughly explored in the book Debating Calvinism, if you are so interested.
Please don't misunderstand these doubts as a total opposition to Calvinist theology. In the same way I have questions for the Calvinists, I have questions for the Arminians. These are questions, I'm afraid, I haven't found solid answers for so I will simply list a couple of them here for you to think on and respond to if you wish (all you Methodists out there this is your opportunity!):
- If God gives us the will to accept or deny His truth, does he also have the power to reject our decision? How does this impact the reality of God's absolute sovereignty?
- How is it possible to read the first chapter of Ephesians and still come out with an Arminian theology? I couldn't find a way to interpret it with Arminian conclusions without twisting the words, regardless of the Bible translation I read. Believe me, I wanted to and I tried. I failed.
So I've considered (only briefly here) both sides of the debate… After all of this, where have I wound up?
There are a couple of accounts in the Bible that come to mind that make a lot more sense in a Calvinist paradigm than outside of it. I remember first reading Exodus, and being terrified at the thought that God hardened the heart of the Egyptian pharaoh, and then released the ten plagues on Egypt because he refused to release the Israelites from slavery. Why would a loving God harden the heart of a man and them punish him for that? It wouldn't make sense to the Israelites (who, by the way, were also hit with the plagues) while it was happening. But it appears that God had a bigger plan — he was launching an attack on the Egyptians' belief in specific gods*, proving His sovereignty in a way that probably couldn't have been accomplished without the plagues. The important part of this whole thing is that Pharaoh might have complied with Moses's requests had God not hardened his heart. God put it into the Pharaoh's heart to refuse Moses' pleas, and so it appears that He has some level of access to change our will. I could touch upon more examples of God stepping in on the will of man, but my point here is not to prove or disprove a theology. I confess that was my intention on the start of this journey, but at the end of it I have come away with a much different response.
We live in a very polarized culture, sticking ourselves with labels like Democrat or Republican, gay or straight, Christian or not, Calvinist or Arminian… Why do we do this? Labels seem to limit us more than anything, yet we cling to them, seemingly, because a whole bunch of other people cling to them too, which validates our beliefs. This is what my Discrete II professor calls Proof by Democratic Process, which is of course nonsense.
So I won't subscribe to either Calvinism or Arminianism, because I believe that while there is truth to both theologies, neither is wholly irrefutable. I find more scriptural evidence for Calvinism than I do for Arminianism, but the fact that some of it is backed by scripture doesn't validate the theology as a whole.
And while I am on the subject of "scriptural evidence," I read something last night in Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis that really comforted me. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here, so give me some grace if I have left something out) that while it is important to look at the Bible as absolute truth, it is also important to remember that it needs to be interpreted to be understood. Jewish rabbis (and their congregations) subscribe to particular interpretations called yolks. There are several different yolks, and deciding to join a particular rabbi's congregation meant subscribing to his yolk as well. This should be the yolk you find closest to the truth, but all that means is that it is the interpretation you find closest to what you think is the truth. So for one verse, even something as fundamental as Love thy neighbor, there may be many different interpretations. What is a neighbor? What is love? What would be an act of love toward my neighbor and what would constitute an act that would go against this commandment?
I note all of this to emphasize that both Calvinists and Arminians are interpreting the Bible according to a version of the truth they subscibe to — their yolk. You and I don't have to subscribe to either yolk in its entirety. As long as we both understand that God is sovereign and that He offers us grace and salvation through His son Jesus Christ, then the rest is all smoke. The rest is our feeble attempt to get as close to the rest of truth as we possibly can.
I'm on the other side of this research feeling a little bit more Calvinist than when I started out, but far from a point where I can insist that either theology is absolute truth. Absolute truth, really, is Jesus. When I look at Jesus I see truth. Everything else is just smoke.
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Much of my research is saved as clippings in a Google Notebook. Check it out here.